Author Spreads The Word On Power Of The Elderly

When he was a 20-year-old junior from Newark, N.J., majoring in physics and electrical engineering at Lehigh University, Ken Dychtwald took a psychology class that focused on human potential.

"My Geiger counter went off," he said.

He had become quickly and intensely interested in the subject that would shape his career, gerontology.

But now, after 10 books and countless speeches and seminars and at least three business ventures, Dychtwald might agree that the Geiger counter also indicated there was gold in the silvering of America.

He has become a guru of what he calls the "age wave," the march of the Baby Boomers, his generation, into their senior years and the changes they will bring to American society.

Dychtwald, who turns 50 this month, will expound on his views in Age Power!, airing Saturday on WXEL-Ch. 42. It's based on his latest book, Age Power: How the 21st Century Will be Ruled by the New Old, published in September.

Dychtwald's work draws on all he has gathered in the past three decades, beginning with that class in 1970 and continuing with the six months he spent at California's Eselen Institute.

He went to "study the notion that within human beings there is an enormous reservoir of capabilities, most of which is being untapped. All of us have great capabilities -- mental, physical, spiritual. I was fascinated by the idea that there were various techniques and therapies and knowledge around the world. I was fascinated with the relationship between the mind and the body, with the idea that we might be more than we were."

Over the years, Dychtwald has been a sort of Paul Revere, trying to alert Americans that their country is about to change mightily as Boomers head toward their senior years. In his book and in the televised lecture, he provides charts showing that "for 99 percent of all the years that humans have walked this planet, the average life expectancy was less than 18 years. Two-thirds of all the people who have ever lived past 65 in the history of the world are alive today." And he describes areas of concern, what he calls "train wrecks," ahead.

"I saw that our culture was going through an unprecedented demographic upheaval, but people didn't seem to be noticing that we were having dramatic increases in longevity, and fertility rates were dropping," he said.

"In the decades to come, every aspect of American society is going to be reoriented away from youth toward maturity. Advertising, marketing, urban design, politics and the entire economic structure of the U.S. was going to have to retool to become a gerontocracy governed by the old."

Among the recommendations that Dychtwald presents in his book and television lecture to older Americans:

Don't blame your genes or doctor or environment. Instead, take care of your equipment, that is, your body. Advances in biomedicine and information gathered by the Human Genome Project will make that easier.

Be involved in something meaningful, something larger than yourself. Think about what you'll do with your extra years.

Focus on your relationships with people you love.

Although he believes political and economic power is shifting to the elderly, he also believes that the government is sometimes on the wrong track, particularly when the issues are health care and the aforementioned entitlements.

He is also, interestingly enough, at odds with AARP, the huge, nonprofit organization for those 50 and older -- and whose magazine, Modern Maturity, has never mentioned him, he says.

"AARP is an organization I think is misguided," he said. "They're missing an opportunity to be the most extraordinary social tool in the century. I think they've become a buying club. And there is no group or person who will take them on."